Catalog

Breaking With Old Ideas

This film is feared and hated - by those who now rule China. Chiang Ching gave political and artistic guidance to this work, produced at the height of the battle against Den Xiapeng who became "top leader" in China and personified all that Mao opposed. It is an example of "revolutionary romanticism," an approach to the creation of art upheld by Chiang Ching and opposed by revisionists.

The story revolves around the setting up of a new college. The bourgeoisie of China - that is, party authorities who favored and promoted capitalist methods and social relationships - insist that naturally, in accordance with modern views, the college should be built near the city to better educate experts, especially the sons and daughters of party officials and intellectuals, with the doors closed to those not qualified. Revolutionaries oppose this. Fierce social struggle erupts not only about who should be admitted to this college but over the methods and philosophy that should guide education. The revolutionaries fight and develop an understanding that the oppressed's interest in emancipating all of mankind coincides with the necessity to "break with all traditional ideas and property relations."